Sunday, August 7, 2011

A LITTLE BIT OF A RANT...


Feeling the need to rant a bit about a situation that has been becoming more and more of an issue over the past few years. The issue being that Marion Animal Control is not allowed to pick up dogs outside of the city limits but that are technically still in Marion.

This issue came to our attention again last week when we received the following email:

There is an abandoned fox terrier mix at the KOA on rt 55 in Marion. It apparently has been there for 3 weeks or so. It looks terrible but is still spunky and ate and played with my dogs. I had hoped to catch it and take it with me to Arizona but it was going to take too much time to get her to trust me.

I hope you can go out there and pick her up. I think it would be easy to get her adopted.
Someone might also reach out to these camp sites, as this is not the only dog dumped and the campground owner did not know who to call - because they are not in West Memphis, the animal shelter there would not come to pick the dog up - maybe you know who would - even the pound would be better. The lady at KOA said that people were feeding her, but it clearly was not enough - she is very malnourished.

Since the campground is technically in Marion - we sent an email to and called Marion Animal Control. This was the response from the animal control officer:

I can't go in to the county . They (KOA) had called here but chief (Chief of Police) won't let me take dogs from the county.

So now this poor pup is struggling to survive off of scraps from visitors at the Campground with no hope that anyone is going to rescue her. She is not alone - many dogs are dumped at this same location and there is nobody to call for help.

PAWS would love to help - but as you all know - we do not receive any municipal funding and we do not have a shelter facility. Our ability to help at any given time is based solely on foster space and available funds. We have neither right now - and those of you who know us - know that is pretty much our status quo.

It breaks our hearts when we receive an email like the one above and know there is a dog in need that nobody is going to help.

Not sure what the solution is. We know that the Marion Animal Shelter is often full and that intaking more dogs would stress the shelter's capacity. On the other hand - it does not seem fair that these dogs are left to fend for themselves just because they do not live in the right part of Marion (the City).

I am sure there are other points to be made on this issue beyond the humane argument - such as stray dogs can be a danger to humans, carrying disease, possibly showing aggression - and having them running amok also does not help to solve the overpopulation problem.

The immediate issue is that there is a sweet, scared, hungy Fox Terrier mix at the KOA campground in Marion, Arkansas that needs someone to help her. PAWS volunteers are not animal control officers - but we try our best to help if we can.

We are hoping that someone reads this story and will go to the campground to help this girl. Probably will need a live trap to catch her at this point.

If anyone has a live trap that can be set to try to catch her and if anyone is able to foster her if she is caught, please send us an email.

The long-term need is that something needs to change - and animal control needs to extend to outside of the city limits of Marion, AR. Perhaps contacting City Council members or the Police Chief would be a good place to start? Anyone have any ideas?

Thank you for reading!

www.pawsofmarion.org



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